Edf energy

The number of households being forced onto prepayment meters has rocketed over the past few months - but what are your rights? With standard credit meters, you pay for energy after you've used it but with prepayment meters, you have to pay in advance and the cost of energy is usually more expensive. Citizens Advice revealed that around 600,000 people were switched onto a prepayment meter last year and warned that a further 160,000 people could be put on them before the end of the winter if nothing changes. Your supplier has to follow licence conditions set by Ofgem , as well as the Government laws and regulations, and if they do not follow them then they can face repercussions from the regulator. If you are being threatened with a prepayment installation then you will need to know your rights. Sadly, suppliers are allowed to force a prepayment meter onto you if you are in energy debt as they are often installed as part of a plan to repay the debt you owe to the energy … [Read more...] about Can your energy company force you to have a prepayment meter? Your rights explained

A vulnerable gran with memory issues was falsely issued a whopping £7k bill a month - an error that her son claims could have cost her life. Her son has now slammed British Gas after his elderly mum was sent the devastating letter, revealing that another family member has previously committed suicide due to the stresses of mounting bills. He has now also questioned why the letter, with the error, was allowed to be sent to his mum in the first place. Sylvia Dea, a retired 78-year-old grandmother of three suffers from a number of health issues, including onset memory problems which means she requires daily support and care. And when she received the huge nearly £7,000 bill from British Gas in December, her son was left shocked. Jon, 50, told Teesside Live when he discovered the letter sent to his mum, he attempted to call the energy and home services provider to query what he felt was 'clearly a mistake'. Jon said that the is concerned for other customers who … [Read more...] about Vulnerable gran issued £7k British Gas bill in error that ‘could have cost her life’

There are still a few more weeks until warmer weather finally arrives. If you need some extra help to cover the cost of your energy bills , there are several schemes which could give you financial support this winter. The majority of these schemes, which are run by the UK Government , are still running now - and if you're eligible you can put in a claim. Mirror Money has compiled a full list of the support which could be available to you along with the eligibility criteria for each, and how much you potentially could get. The support scheme which are an by the Government are still going and the majority will continue until the end of March ( Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto) Cold Weather Payments - £25 Cold Weather Payments , worth £25, are normally paid automatically by the DWP when your town or city experiences, or is forecast to experience, temperatures zero degrees and under for seven consecutive days. The scheme runs from November 1 to March 31 in … [Read more...] about Check if you’re missing out on extra cold weather cash worth up to £600

Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Captain Jamie Ritchie insists Scotland’s latest Calcutta Cup triumph must be a springboard to further successes and not another false dawn. Gregor Townsend ’s men toppled rivals England in their opening fixture of the Guinness Six Nations for the third successive year thanks to Saturday evening’s rousing 29-23 Twickenham victory . The Scots were brought crashing back to earth by subsequent losses to Wales on the previous two occasions and ended fourth in the final championship table each time. While Ritchie was eager to savour a further famous success over the Auld Enemy, he is determined to eradicate the frustrating inconsistency which has prevented his country pushing on to mount title challenges. “It’s just the start,” said the Edinburgh flanker, ahead of another round-two showdown with … [Read more...] about Jamie Ritchie calls on Scotland to back up Six Nations victory in England

Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock looks as if he's headed for a tough race to defend his Georgia seat against GOP contender Herschel Walker in November's midterm. Walker, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump , won't be the Georgia Republican Party's official nominee until after May 24's primary. Recent polling shows that he's dominating the GOP field, however. A survey conducted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April had the former NFL player with nearly two-thirds of Republican voters' support, while all his opponents were in the single digits. Warnock hopes to hold on to his hard-won seat, which he picked up in a relatively close runoff election in January 2021 against Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler . He declared victory in that contest with about 51 percent of the vote and a relatively narrow margin of fewer than 100,000 votes. Whether Democrats can maintain the seat in traditionally red Georgia will be seen as a test of the party's … [Read more...] about Raphael Warnock’s Chances of Beating Herschel Walker, According to Polls

With Pennsylvania's primary race between Republican Senate hopefuls Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick headed for a probable automatic recount, former President Donald Trump is ranting against election fraud on Truth Social, calling the voting system "a complete disaster." Oz, the Trump-endorsed celebrity surgeon, leads former hedge fund manager McCormick by around 1,100 votes as of Saturday, with nearly 99 percent of votes counted, according to CBS Philly. Oz was leading with 418,535 as of late afternoon, compared to 417,465 votes for McCormick. In Pennsylvania, an automatic recount is required "when the margin for a statewide office or ballot measure is less than or equal to 0.5% of the total vote," according to Ballotpedia. The former president took to his social media platform Saturday, as he has for days, to air his grievances on the election process and seek the termination of mail-in ballots. "Why does it take sooo long, like in Pennsylvania, to conclude - 5 … [Read more...] about Primary Race Between Oz, McCormick Looks Headed for Recount as Trump Fumes

WASHINGTON — President Biden probably will not put it quite this way when he gets up before Congress to address the nation this week, but the state of America’s union is disunion. To see that, he will need only turn around to find a Republican House speaker seated behind him, determined to block his every move. So Mr. Biden’s message of unity, a hard sell already during his first two years in office, may prove even more out of sync on Tuesday night as he delivers his first State of the Union address of this new era of divided government. Yet for a president who prides himself on working across the aisle, a unity pitch may paradoxically be a useful cudgel to hammer his newly empowered opponents. Mr. Biden plans to present himself to what is likely to be his largest television audience of the year as the adult in the room, willing and able to reach bipartisan compromises in an age of deep partisanship, according to advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the … [Read more...] about For Biden, a Chance for a Fresh Start in a New Era of Divided Government

Menopause, for many women, is an unknown — a confusing tunnel to pass through, with limited signage for what to expect. But one effective treatment has been overlooked for decades, signaling that women’s suffering is widely regarded as unimportant, according to the cover story in today’s New York Times Magazine. I spoke with Susan Dominus, who wrote the article, about her reporting and the reactions it has received from women. Lauren: I learned more from your story than I’ve ever learned about menopause. It has been so absent from public discourse. Susan: I too knew almost nothing going into this. I told a friend I was working on a story about menopause. Her eyes went wide and she just said, “Thank you.” And I could tell that what she meant by that was: That’s good, because I know nothing. After I got up to speed, I was constantly bringing the subject up at dinner parties, asking my friends, “Hey, how is your menopause going?” You’d think that would be really … [Read more...] about Silent Suffering

The next phase of the Ukraine War, a new Russian offensive and a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive, seems all but inevitable for late winter or early spring. The logic of escalation is prevailing, the mutual belief that no peace deal is possible until the other side understands that it can’t win. The Ukrainian hope for how this escalation ends was sketched out by Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a recent interview with Bruno Macaes for The New Statesman. “Russia will embark on some minor offensive actions in a short period of time,” Macaes summarizes. “A lot of manpower will be lost. After that, it will face a series of significant defeats.” This will lead to Russian unraveling: Major cities will be lost, some kind of military collapse will follow, and then there will be “uncontrolled political transformation” within the Russian Federation itself. Podolyak doesn’t predict that all of this will happen this spring, suggesting that the timing … [Read more...] about The Costs of a Long War in Ukraine

Each night at dusk, in an otherwise desolate Times Square, hundreds of nurses in blue scrubs gather to board buses that take them to hospitals across New York City. Of the thousands of nurses who have come from other states to shore up New York’s hospitals, more than 4,000 are staying in Midtown Manhattan. During the day, many rest at their hotels, amid darkened Broadway marquees, quiet streets and boarded up shops. At night, they face crowded hospital corridors, panicked patients and strained intensive care units . And death. “I have never seen patients so sick before,’’ said Tamara Williams, a 40-year-old nurse from Dallas. “And dying, despite everything that we’re doing.” Even as the daily death toll has fallen in recent weeks, the coronavirus is still spreading. The number of new hospital admissions in New York, the hardest-hit state, has remained high, at about 1,000 a day, down from more than 3,000 a day in early April. Out-of-state nurses have … [Read more...] about Hundreds of Miles From Home, Nurses Fight Coronavirus on New York’s Front Lines